favorite recipes from a Northwest kitchen

Jeweled Rice with Golden Raisins, and Hey, What Cooking Magazines Do You Love?

What cooking magazines do you recommend? I loved Gourmet and miss it every time I get the Bon Appetit that comes now instead. I also get Everyday Food, the source of today’s recipe. And I received the Canal House series as a gift this year and can’t wait for the next one. But my all-time favorite cooking magazine comes from New Zealand: Cuisine. It’s beautiful and glossy and equal parts fussy and laid-back, with delicious recipes and cute names for vegetables (Swiss chard is called silverbeet, and zucchini are courgettes).

But more, I want more! Or, more precisely, I just want to know if there’s something great out there that I’m missing. I like good food, reliable recipes, smart writing. Any tips for me? I’ve gotten so much good advice from you people lately that I just thought I should ask.

I made this rice to accompany Indian food that our neighbors lovingly brought home from Vij’s in Vancouver (eat there if you ever get a chance). I think a sweet-and-savory combo is just the thing with spicy food, and it was quick and easy to make–although now that I’ve read this I may pop it in the oven to finish cooking next time. It would also be great made with brown rice.Jeweled Rice with Golden Raisins: Finely dice an onion and saute in 2 Tb. butter over medium heat until it softens (about 8 minutes). Add 1 c. long-grain white rice and continue to cook, stirring often, for 3 minutes. Add 2 c. water and 1/2 tsp. salt, bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and cook, covered, for about 12 more minutes, until the rice absorbs the water and is tender. Stir in half a cup of golden raisins and cover the pot for three more minutes to let them soften.

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40 thoughts on “Jeweled Rice with Golden Raisins, and Hey, What Cooking Magazines Do You Love?”

I love Cuisine too. Recipes are beautiful. Although the local food news upfront is a bit long when you are not living in NZ and can’t try out their suggestions! At the moment I am loving the new Feasts magazine by SBS (a national TV broadcaster in Australia) for all the multicultural dishes and facts. The photography is beautiful too. Not sure you can get it overseas tho xxx

I used to get Gourmet and was stunned they stopped publishing. Bon Appetit just doesn’t do it for me, though as one of my friends says, it is good “food porn”. I’ve pared down to Vegetarian Times (kinda snoozy, truthfully). Yikes! Vegans need a good, glossy rich cooking mag!

I got Vegetarian Times for a while way back when but I never loved the recipes. Do you read vgourmet.ca? I love her videos–so not a magazine, but glossy & vegan. :) Watch this one: http://youtu.be/MqvVOdvm_y8

My very favorite is ‘Cooks Illustrated’. I love the glossy, flashy, colorful mags too but this one is the complete opposite. Simple, beautiful pen and ink drawings and photos throughout and a beautifully drawn back cover, clever writing by the writers and the editor (Christopher Kimball), the science behind cooking, tasty (and always successful) recipes and NO advertising. Every page is devoted to cooking and food. I might look through the photos in other magazines, but it is by far my choice when I really want to cook. Check it out! (I was sad when Gourmet went away too…)

I do love the illustrations! I used to get Cooks Illustrated but after I while I realized I was really only collecting them for the back covers. The vegetarian recipes are few and far between, and that’s mostly what I’m looking for. Have you ever used their website, though? I have thought about subscribing to it because I do often think their methods are ingenious when I use their recipes!

Haven’t used the website….have thought about it often though! Yes, their recipes are fantastic and every one that I have tried has been foolproof– but now that I think about it, they don’t have a great collection of vegetarian recipes. Let me know if you subscribe to the website!

I went to Somer’s list of current favs and loved them. Will be checking some of them out. FYI, I just bought and read two great books. One is written by a mom who was seeking to feed her kids well and in a wholesome manner (THE HOMEMADE PANTRY: 101 FOODS YOU CAN STOP BUYING & START MAKING by Alana Chernila) and the other,by a chef who has worked at both Chez Panisse and Prune, AN EVERLASTING MEAL: COOKING WITH ECONOMY AND GRACE by Tamar Adler). I learned things from both books and enjoyed each author’s writing. Chernila includes wonderful family stories along wtih basic info, with humor and honesty. In the intro to Adler’s book, Alice Waters says, “Tamar has an instinctive gift for cooking, an almost effortless way of creating meals – and as I quickly learned, she is an extraordinary writer…” I’ll second Waters’ comment – sometimes reading her cooking suggestions can be like reading poetry. She personifies ingredients, showing that she is deep into the creative process, as well as honoring every bit of edible sustenance that comes her way.

I really need to get to creating my list of current favorite cookbooks to post on my blog. Time is so short lately– I guess I just have to give it some sort of priority! Thanks for the inspiration.

I miss Gourmet too. I used to hate Bon Appetit but I do think it’s a lot better with the new editor. I get Saveur which is fun to look at but I never cook anything from it (though I do sometimes from their website). I keep meaning to get the Canal House ones. I’ve really cut back on all the food and shelter mags. I used to get a ton of the latter, but then I started realizing I was seeing the same houses in different ones and decided I was wasting my money. Much as I loved magazines back in the day, I finally decided I couldn’t single-handedly keep the periodicals in business!

I used to get Saveur and I did like the writing–maybe I should bring that one back. I only get food magazines because the design ones are just too pie-in-the-sky for me. A cleared table after breakfast is about as close as I ever get to a dreamy expanse of sparse, well-designed home–and many days I don’t get that close. :) I love the Le Creuset pots too! I got a few at an outlet a few years ago and now mostly only cook in those and my cast iron skillets.

I have never read Gastronomica, but I have thumbed through it at this great little Frenchy cafe in my neighborhood (Cafe Presse, we can meet there for coffee next time you’re in Seattle) that has a huge rack of foodie magazines for sale at the front. It’s a secret fantasy of mine to spend an afternoon there by myself someday drinking coffee (and then wine, of course) and reading Gastronomica from cover to cover. Failing that, though, I guess I could just buy one and bring it home with me. :) Thanks for the recommendation!

For sure! My best friend moved to Seattle a year ago and I have yet to go out and visit her (I think it’s because I’m lazy, and she always seems to be back in New York for something). If I make it out there, I will definitely let you know!

Gastronomica is great. You kind of want to start collecting them at one point. Lapham’s Quarterly did a food issue too last summer that was great.

I agree that brown basmati rice would be perfect here! I usually cook brown rice as well but resort to white when I have 20 minutes until dinnertime instead of 40. (Unless I’m organized enough to have cooked brown rice in my freezer, which I also love!)

I get Food&Wine and Sunset (my favorite mag of all!), but I love Whole Living, which isn’t all a food magazine. I agree with your other commenter that Vegetarian Times was a bit boring, so I stopped subscribing. I love Cook’s Illustrated, but don’t subscribe. This rice looks yummy!

I have gotten all of these magazines at various times! I guess I’m not good at renewing them or noticing when they stop. :) I liked the food part of Food and Wine, but my wine purchases are based solely on my local shop’s stock and recommendations so I didn’t really care about the wine. And I do get Sunset, which always makes me wish I spent more time and energy in my yard. I like the monthly calendar reminding me what I should go outside and do!

You know, I don’t really like any cooking magazines. They all seem to be to focused on either fetishizing and exoticizing food or on “easy 1-2-3 10-minute dinner from the contents of six cans!” John Thorne’s Simple Cooking newsletters are probably the closest thing to a food mag that I like.

Ok, so I went poking around this website and don’t really get it. Do you subscribe and then you get an occasional issue via email? That kind of cracks me up, it’s such a new media/old media hybrid. I haven’t read his books, but I like his posts here: http://markbittman.com/tag/johnthorne

It is kind of a weird hybrid! They started in the late 70s/early 80s, so the subscription model is based on actual paper newsletters. So now, after the rise of electronic media, you can get either the paper mailed version or the pdf by email. Regardless, John Thorne is pretty awesome. :)

On a practical level, I like Cooking Light. But if you’re a fan of Saveur, try getting a hold of Lucky Peach. It’s released quarterly and published by David Chang (of NYC Momofuku fame). All the features are written by professional chefs.

La Cucina Italiana may be my favorite food magazine, just because of how much my mouth waters when I look at the photos.

Love Food and Wine, FoodTV, Bon Apetit, and just about anything else with food IN it. Gave up my subscriptions and just started printing recipes from their sites so save my cupboards some room. Plus I didn’t want to appear as a budding pack rat to my husband. Haha.

Oh, I so have that problem. My desk has a permanent pile of magazines on it (and, let me be honest, also under it). I do try to tear out pages and move them to my huge recipe file but… Probably it would be better at this point to just go online and save my favorites on Pinterest or something. But I like reading things that aren’t on my computer, too, so I can’t give up the paper copies yet.

I do like Cooks Illustrated and I LOVE the back covers. They don’t seem to have a lot of vegetarian recipes, though (or at least they didn’t when I used to get it), which is mostly what I’m looking for. I like the stuff of theirs I find online, though, and I have thought about buying an online subscription (plenty of recipes there!).

My favorite cooking magazines are EATING WELL (I turn to the reader essay to read first, usually at the back of the mag; love the up-to-date food research they tend to include; need to re-subscribe), COOKING LIGHT (have a subscription; ditto love info re food research, what’s good for you, etc.), CLEAN EATING (like whole concept of magazine even though can’t manage to stick to the entire dietary scheme of it!), LA CUCINA ITALIA (Italian is may favorite cuisine) and FOOD NETWORK MAGAZINE (a bit too celebrity-based but get lots of ideas from it). I also usually get EVERYDAY WITH RACHEL RAY (for ideas; besides, she grew up not far from here and I get a kick out of times she might mention the area). Sometimes COOKS ILLUSTRATED and/or FINE COOKING. I was gifted with a subscription to SAVEUR but let it run out – it didn’t exactly grab me (very few recipes that I’d bother to try).

I keep all my issues of LA CUCINA ITALIA because they’re so beautiful & I dream of getting to Italy someday (but it’s not likely). Eventually all others get cut up – saving recipes I want to try in appropriate folders, and maybe a few pictures or words get clipped for future collages.

Hi Emmy – if we are really leading parallel lives, you should be reading Clean Eating! Not for the writing, but definitely for the healthy kitchen/recipe ideas. It is sort of like a much-less-sexy-looking, non-vegetarian, Heidi Swanson style of cooking (all whole foods, interesting grains, etc). Also, Food 52 is great online (check out their butter-dipped radishes – you could dress up your new snack for a party!) – I am hopeful that someday they might go to print, although doesn’t seem to be their thing … People have mentioned Cuisine, Sunset, and Bon Appetit, which are the only other ones I currently receive – Bon Appetit may not be great but does offer jumping off points, I find. Cookbooks are my mainstay though, especially older ones for some reason. Homemade Pantry from Alana Chernila is a great new one though, and I am looking forward to the Dinner A Love Story book … Great post topic!

Saveur! It has so many pretty pictures and informative how-tos. The best part is the travel stories. I love seeing food from across the world being prepared. My favorite food magazine by far, even though I own stacks and stacks of old Gourmet mags. Thank you, yard sales! :)

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